


a fall like lightning

by laikaspeaks



Series: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure Drabble Collection [4]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - How to Train Your Dragon Fusion, Dragon Riders, Feral Behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28235946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laikaspeaks/pseuds/laikaspeaks
Summary: Cassandra has spent her life dreaming of the world beyond Corona, the glorified rock jutting from a frozen sea that she and the other vikings called home. She didn't expect the world would come knocking on her door.
Relationships: Cassandra/Rapunzel (Disney: Tangled)
Series: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure Drabble Collection [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046908
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	a fall like lightning

Rapunzel balanced lightly on Pascal's shoulders, gripping with her knees and tilting her body to prompt him to wheel around and circle the island again. There was no worry in taking their time looking the place over. Between their altitude and the blue-and-grey camouflage the changewing had adopted, there was little change of them being spotted from the island below. 

What a tiny island it was!

She couldn’t imagine living on such a dull little rock, overcrowded by tight stone houses and the stench of unwashed bodies that she caught on the wind. Now and then she caught the bleating of sheep. That made her heart race with excitement, the sense-memory of the tang of copper flooding her mouth. Even Pascal wobbled briefly in the air at the sound. Instead she sat back and planted herself so that Pascal slowed, shaking away the thought of food. They were here for a reason! She couldn’t get distracted, even if their long pursuit had left them both hungry. 

A good friend of hers was trapped somewhere on this blasted rock - Rapunzel saw her get captured and dragged away in chains and ropes. She and Pascal followed the ships from above for such a long time, and vikings never dropped anchor. So her friend had to be here. She had to be.

Then she caught the sound. The faint rattling cry of a dragon in distress. She followed it and found a barred dome of steel and chain perched high on a spiral of bare stone, like a cage fashioned for a massive bird. Even free on the wind she felt a chill settle in her stomach, because even free on the wind she could scent the acrid pain and bitter misery of this place. That broken cry lifted again and trailed off into a thin wail. 

Rapunzel let out a slow exhale that rattled in the back of her throat and hissed out between her teeth. Beneath her Pascal responded with the same sound in a body built for it: a deeper, more rumbling sound that started in the chest and hissed its way up his throat. His normally emerald scales rippled venomous blue with red, serrated whorls.

 _Danger,_ she said uneasily. _Danger,_ Pascal agreed.

She pulled her weapon from her belt and tightened her grip with her knees, leaning forward as Pascal snapped his wings closer to his body to send them rocketing into a dive. They were going to get their friend back, and no human could stand in their way. 

* * *

Cassandra was going to lose her mind. She really was. She could be out doing literally anything more useful. Checking traps, repairing nets, going fishing. Learning to juggle, even. Yet here she was on shitheel guard duty, which amounted to standing in front of a heavy locked door and praying for the sweet release of death. 

Sure, maybe she shouldn’t have thrown a bowl of food at Eugene, and maybe the resulting food fight left the dining hall plastered floor to ceiling with gruel that dried to the consistency of stone… but she helped clean it up! No one else got stuck standing around in front of the most secure location on Corona like a moron. So she was the Captain’s daughter, that didn’t mean she should get punished twice. 

Cassandra slumped against the door with a sigh, sliding down and letting her head thump against the solid wood. After a long moment staring up at the equally boring sky, she gave in and rummaged around in the bag at her hip for some of her most recent notes. All her poring over the accounts of previous explorers, all her effort and all she had to show for it was a handful of maps. Each one more inaccurate than the last. 

Only one of them was at all useful. Corona, lovingly detailed in colorful inks that took weeks to prepare and apply. 

The island of Corona was barely an island at all and more a series of unforgiving spires of stone jutting from the sea. The island - and therefore the town’s - name came from the fact that the cluster of stones was surrounded by a low-lying ring of stone that was covered at high tide and served as a natural barrier at any other time. Between that and spurs of stone that radiated outward from the island, on marine charts Corona looked like a stylized sun, thus the name.

That was the end of her map. That was it, just Corona, floating in a sea of white with a few stylized swirls of mist and doodles of sea dragons to make the page look less pathetically empty.

She tossed aside the bundle of papers and drew her grandmother’s sword from the scabbard at her back. At first glance it was an unusually plain blade for an heirloom weapon, without any of the usual etchings or ornate metalwork that marked such things. Its beauty was in its balance. It moved so perfectly when she slashed it through the air, as though it were forged for her alone. 

Cassandra balanced the sword on her knees, rubbing her thumb over the Captain’s Crest. 

A foundling receiving the family weapon was unheard-of on Berk. By rights there were any number of aunts or uncles, hell even a few cousins who had more claim. Her father, distant as he was, passed it to her instead. She wanted to prove worthy of that gift. She wanted to fill in all the maps, correct all the charts, etch her name into the very stones of this place so that no one would question if she belonged ever again. She couldn’t do that guarding a door.

She pushed herself to her feet and returned her sword to its sheath. It didn’t matter how she felt about this, Cass had to do her job properly. That, however, was not to be.

Suddenly the air in front of Cass _unfolded_ , revealing a figure hovering in mid-air as though astride an invisible horse. She didn’t have time to process this before something slammed against her chest and then slapped down on her again, pinning her on her back against the ground. The air itself swam as though it were water, and suddenly she was faced with the toothy maw of a very unhappy changewing dragon. She opened her mouth to shout, and a sudden increase in pressure knocked the air and voice from her body.

In the time it took for Cassandra to catch her breath and for her vision to clear, the figure had time to slide from the dragon’s back and walk to the heavy metal door.

The girl was about Cassandra’s age, with delicate, deeply bronzed features and long blonde hair hanging loose down her back. She wore a strange patchwork of leather armor and purple fabric, and no shoes even here where the stone was cold enough to turn sea spray to frost. The girl hefted a sword in one slim hand, but Cass found it hard to focus on the potential threat from the girl when the dragon’s clawed foot was pressing down heavily on her torso. Cassandra could feel those claws curling subtly under the curve of her ribs, threatening to sink under her rib cage and into all her soft, important organs. 

Stinking, sulphurous breath washed over Cass each time the dragon exhaled, making her dizzy and sick. 

The girl stabbed the sword into the ground at her side, and it was only then that Cass registered the crest glinting mockingly. Somehow while she was still wheezing for air and hoping her ribs weren’t broken, that little bitch skittered over and stole her family sword. 

Cassandra could probably breathe fire like a dragon at that exact moment. Despite the actual dragon literally standing on her chest and the molten fury melting her brain, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the girl. There was something almost hypnotic about watching her thoughts flit across her expressive face, the methodical way she prodded at the door and fiddled with the heavy padlock and chain. 

Sharp, glittering green eyes turned to her and in the next moment the girl was next to her again. 

Slim, strong hands pulled up Cassandra’s shirt and started tugging at her belt, transparently interested only in the coin purse and the small bag where Cass kept a flint and steel. Even so, fingertips skimming incautiously over her stomach made heat bloom in her face. Cass was relieved when the girl withdrew, if only for the fact she could shove that reaction somewhere deep down and never, ever examine it. 

“Where are the keys?” The girl plucked the words from the air one at a time like a novice player testing the strings of a lute. Cassandra’s own sword settled under her chin, as though the threat of the entire fucking dragon wasn’t enough. 

Cassandra gritted her teeth against her heart thundering in her mouth. Even if it weren’t the truth… she would rather die with her honor than live with the shame. She was starting to think she might very well do just that. “I don’t have the keys. Even if I did I wouldn’t hand them over to you!” 

The girl stared at her for a long moment. Then she turned away, her hand going white-knuckled around the hilt of Cassandra’s sword. One of the changewing’s vine-like tendrils coiled out and ghosted tenderly over the girl’s slim shoulders and down the length of her arm before finally settling for twining around her wrist.

The girl let out a guttural sound that made the dragon jump, so rough and lingering that Cassandra wondered how she managed to make human words at all. She tilted her head toward the dragon and spat - as in literal spit - in the direction of the door. 

Cassandra felt a sinking in her gut, which wasn’t improved when the dragon reared back on its haunches - of course without removing its stupid claw from her so she could escape - letting out a series of coughs from the back of its throat as though it was trying to dislodge some stubborn phlegm. Its broad sides heaved, and it vomited out a stream of steaming green, viscous fluid that covered the lock and most of the door. Even as Cassandra watched the metal started sloughing away like sugar melting in the sun. 

She tore her eyes from the door and stared up at the dripping, toothy jaws. A droplet landed next to her head and she could hear it sizzle. Oh fuck.  
  
The captive dragons exploded from the doorway all at once like a brace of pigeons released from a cage - a flurry of wings and cries of a half dozen different beasts. Perhaps they craved the sky more than they craved vengeance, because they didn’t stick around to chew Cass into a pulp. All but the last which all-but prowled through the door - and the sight chilled Cass to the bone. The dragon was long and sleek, with thick, shaggy brown fur running from the top of its head to the base of its tail and an underbelly of segmented scales. Even a tiny, reflexive flex of its claws carved deep furrows into the hard, frosted stone. A Wooly Howl, so rare that this one was only captured out of sheer dumb luck when a cave-in crushed one of it’s great, stippled wings under a boulder. 

The girl let out a few short, soft whistles between her teeth that were as much air as sound. The dragon’s head whipped around, and it thundered away from Cass to nuzzle at the girl’s hair, trilling a more melodious version of the sound the girl made. 

Cass let out a tiny, shameful sound of relief, and it's great head swiveled, birdlike so that it could regard her once more. It had huge, golden eyes that were more clever than she expected.

Her breath caught in her chest. She knew this beast in a way she couldn’t explain, even though she had never laid eyes on it before this moment. It was more than simply recognizing that this was another thinking being. It was... like the first time she was knocked into the dirt on the training fields, the air knocked right out of her lungs. It was struggling back upright and planting her feet and snarling for one more try. One more. One more. 

Something passed between them, these two creatures that would die before they would bend. 

Then the moment passed, and the dragon took a running leap off the cliff. It wobbled in the air, it’s injured wing pulling it a little to the side as it struggled… but it corrected itself and faded into the clouds like a phantom. Once it was gone the girl hopped onto the changewing’s back, and the two shot away without a word or backward glance. As though Cassandra was of less interest to them than dirt. Cass stumbled to her feet and ran to the edge of the cliff and only barely stopped short of flinging herself after them. All she could do was stand at the edge and roar, her voice torn into shreds with horror disguised as rage. 

The dragon thief took _her sword._

**Author's Note:**

> This took way longer to write than I actually want to admit.


End file.
